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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: accusation stated, and the letters were opened, to which the traitors
could make no plea. Most of the people standing mute and sorrowful,
some only, out of kindness to Brutus, mentioning banishment, the tears
of Collatinus, attended with Valerius's silence, gave some hopes of
mercy. But Brutus, calling his two sons by their names, "Canst not
thou," said he, "O Titus, or thou, Tiberius, make any defense against
the indictment?" The question being thrice proposed, and no reply made,
he turned himself to the lictors, and cried, "What remains is your
duty." They immediately seized the youths, and, stripping them of their
clothes, bound their hands behind them, and scourged their bodies with
their rods; too tragical a scene for others to look at; Brutus, however,
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